Mike, I have to say I agree. When I hear some opera singers sing other genres of music it sometimes sounds ludicrous. To me they don't sound natural. I prefer a more natural way of singing that responds to your intentions instead of only making this one kind of sound. To bring up our old friend Jussi Björling, there are some examples from the '30s when he sang with a dance band in Stockholm to make some extra money. He sounds completely natural at it and not absurd at all. I think part of that is because he had a beautiful speaking technique and he always sang in a way that came from that basis. He recorded these pop songs under the name Erik Odde so people wouldn't know it was the singer from the Royal Opera. As another example, I have heard some recordings Marilyn Horne made when she was young imitating the pop artists at the time. She was incredible in her ability to sound like many of the stars of the time. I think she was in her late teens and early twenties. She even did the singing voice of "Carmen Jones", the movie of Carmen set with all black characters. I personally like the way she sings when she was imitating someone else better than when she was being herself later in life. To me it sounds like she is imitating what she thinks an opera singer should sound like. But she also is a fantastic artist and had a phenomenal career. So the positives strongly outweigh the negatives.
Michael
>From: RALUCOB@a... >Reply-To: vocalist-temporary@egroups.com >To: vocalist-temporary@egroups.com >Subject: Re: [vocalist-temporary] female falsetto >Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 00:22:11 EDT > >michael, > > i was making a distinction between the 'can be operatic' and the >'hopelessly operatic'. julia migenes' disc 'smile' is an example of >singing >that 'can be operatic'. she produces a wide variety (very wide) of >sounds, >often in the same song. a nightmare-like memory of marilyn horne and joan >sutherland singing beatles' songs on the johnny carson show would >illustrate >'hopelessly operatic' (samuel ramey's broadway disc would be an example of >'repulsively operatic'). in this light, i hope my previous post is made >clearer. > > singing as an extension of speech is another issue. the sustaining >of >pitches in singing means that, a great deal of the time, it takes us longer >to say a word singing it than it does speaking it. how we handle the >distortion of word length affects the cohesion of those words as well as >the >challenge presented by the composer in keeping them words. some writing >is >going destroy the integrity of speech in the text no matter what the singer >does to salvage the text (i don't intend this as a value judgment) and, of >course, some music sets the text very closely to the pitch pattern and >timing >of speech (compare the operatic writing of handel, illustrating the former, >to the operatic writing of benjamin britten, or the spechstimme passages of >'wozzeck', illustrating the latter). > >mike
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